Thursday, May 28, 2009

A Preview

Kathryn and I (Dr. Oler) arrived in Seville on Wednesday. We came by way of New York where we stopped for a nice two day visit with our daughter and her boyfriend. From there, we went to Madrid with a change of planes in London. It all went smoothly with ontime flights and no lost luggage. In Madrid, we boarded the Spanish high speed train for the 2 hour (150 mph) train ride to Seville.

Donna met us at the train station and took us to meet our "host mom" Cristina. She is very nice, has a great apartment and place for us to stay, speaks very little English, but speaks Spanish incredibly fast. We dropped our bags and went on to the school where we met the director, Doug Inglis. We got back to our "home" for dinner with Cristina and were in bed by 10:30. After a 36 hour day on Wednesday, we were exhausted and slept for about 12 hours.

For those students who are not already on the way, here are a few pictures from Seville to wet your appetites. Note: Click on the pictures for a larger image.

This is a picture from the train station platform and along the train ride. I wish that I had more pictures from inside the train station but we were too rushed trying to get to the train. The countryside was very similar to our Texas Caprock. Every conceivable hillside was covered with olive trees. The fields and towns were all incredibly neat and well organized.

The building with the flags is the hotel where the students will be staying on Saturday night. Sunday morning, they will meet their host families and move into their summere "homes".

Here are a few street scenes from near the hotel.

And this is the school - not the religious bookstore, its the door on the right. As you can see, the door isn't marked in any way and it stays locked. Each student will have their own key to get in.

Here are some of the classrooms. Ours is perfectly sized for 20 students, has a new whiteboard and a video projector. It will be great for our purposes.

TTU College of Engineering in Seville, Spain

For the last four years, engineering students and faculty from Texas Tech have spent June and July in Seville, Spain. We invite you to follow this blog to stay abreast with the summer's activities. Feel free to post your greetings and comments for the students.